


fall at your feet

by whiskeylaceddwords



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Romantic Friendship, a series of interconnected oneshots
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-25
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2019-05-13 15:31:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14751542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeylaceddwords/pseuds/whiskeylaceddwords
Summary: Katara and Zuko's bond grows as they pick up the peices of eachother, a series of interconnected oneshots.





	1. cicatrix

The soft glow of the water illuminates the common slope of his brow and ridges of his scar, his face seemingly lax as if he isn’t suffering, but the teeth slicing into his bottom lip and the twitching of his eyes leaves her unfooled. She concentrates her healing to a finer point and muscles spasm underneath trembling fingers. 

There is pent up energy there, and she is trying to smooth it down, but he doesn’t let her. His yelp scares the water away from her hands and she feels as if she is made of stones, she feels heavy with a sense of dread. 

She takes a break after hours of trying to put him back together, letting her hands travel up his torso. She shakes as her hands stop. They settle over his heart, the one she had to restart. Where she had forced the blood from his veins and pushed it back in and out of the valves with twitching fingers.

And when she looks at him, it all comes back. It’s the dead weight of him as she dragged him away from the battleground, it’s the slight thrum of a restarted heartbeat against her fingers and the dark thoughts that flitted through her mind then; that he did this for her and he died because of her.

She lets out a steady breath and calls the water to her once more. There’s scar tissue forming around the seam of the wound. If she could just get it to build, if she could just get the water to penetrate through. If only she could.

She hides her uneasiness, “hold still, it might hurt but you have to- “, his hand is a vice around her wrist. 

“No Katara, I-” he grounds out, it stands the hairs on her arms and slices down her spine. 

“I can’t let you die because of me,” she is quiet, but it still cuts sharp into the air like a slap. Something claws at her throat; but he already had.

He looks down and his dark eyebrows draw together, his hand slipping from hers to his side. There is a long silence. 

“It wasn’t your fault” he sounds so small and she hates it, she hates the way he lays weakly against crimson sheets looking defeated. The way he smiles just for her. That he made that choice because of her. Her lip quivers.

“If I didn’t get there in time- “she pauses, she doesn’t want to say it. She just wants to leave that reality unspoken between them, a reality that would turn back into the ghost of a nightmare over time in their ignorance. But she can’t.

If she didn’t get there in time, she would’ve lost him for good. His heart had stopped and for a moment, his blood was still. But she forced it to move, she forced him to come back.

“I-I bought you back”, her hand smooths over his tattered robes, hovers over the twisted wound. It’s too raw to touch. She looks away and something flares in her chest.

“But you still almost died and-” her throat is tight and her voice wavers. She cradles a hand over her head and moves away from him. He lays rigid and the rawness of it all settles sourly into the air. It settles sourly in his gut as her quiet sobs ring in his ears.

“If she got you” he mutters, “I would’ve never forgiven myself”

His throat constricts and her fingers twitch. She swears she can still feel the sizzle of electricity in his blood, she can still smell the burnt flesh and hear his cry. She breathes in humid air.

“Because, I put you in danger. I taunted her. And I-I couldn’t- “, his eyes snap shut and his mouth is a thin line.

Her nose tips then, and her eyes tired and raw, peek at him from behind the crook of her arm. 

“You don’t have to say it” she murmurs.

His jaw clamps and her eyes soften.

“I’m sorry” she finally whispers.

“What for?” he rasps.

She turns to him and places a soft hand over his chest, above the raw wound. Her lips pinch together.

She traces the seam of scar tissue up his torso, up the hollow of his throat and stops over his left cheek. Her hand snaps back to her side. 

She is reminded of Ba Sing Se again. How when she laid her fingers there, he looked as though he were to break beneath them. She really saw him then and it scared her. It scared her because for the first time, she understood.

He gently takes her wrist and something inside her chest jumps.

She decides that this time is different.

He drags her hand across his jaw and up, up until her fingers graze the twisted side of his face. She presses them there and he exhales shakily. 

“I owe you so much” he murmurs, breath tickling her palm. 

“No,” she pressed “You don’t owe me anything”

“But I do,” he says. She presses her thumb against his cheek and she lets herself look at the raw flesh that tears open his chest.

“You’ve done enough for me” she whispers. The sadness in her voice lingers for a moment on her face. 

But, something like hope burns against her breast as she looks at the sealed edges of the wound. 

Once more, she ever so slowly pulls water from the skin at her hip and presses it against his centre, he hisses when it glows and tries to not push her way. She steadies her hands, arms locked at the elbows.

“Sorry” she says, “I have to try- try to close it”

She swallows.  
But she can’t get the flesh to mesh.

Her chest aches.

“It’s okay”, he says weakly “I get it,” the ache spreads up her throat.

He held all that lightning in his stomach and she can feel the damage it left. The water gloving her hands falls uselessly on his chest and the bile rises to her throat as her fingers twitch and reach. She knows that after hours of trying, her waterbending can do nothing for him. She must fix him from the inside out. 

She’s terrified, but as always, she keeps a placid face.

The moon peeks behind a scarlet sky.

He tightly grips the crimson silk that lays beneath him, it is red like the blood she bends.

~  
What is left is a twisted scar, like the one that occupies one third of his face.

The alabaster skin around it is slick with sweat and she feels sick.

He’s never going to look at me again; she thinks. But he does, the sight of amber warms her chest painfully.

“I’m so sorry,” she splutters, “I-I couldn’t think of any other way-“

“It’s okay,” he says. His chest pulls taunt as he pushes back against the headboard, wincing as the new scar pulls with the movement. 

“But I- “ , her voice tastes bitter as it escapes her lips.

“And you saved me, it’s enough”

He smiles, his eyes crinkle around the edges. That smile on him is so odd to her, and something new warms in her chest at the sight of it.

She pushes damp curls behind her ears, letting them gather in a clump against her back. She lets out a sigh, releasing the tension that wounds tight in her chest.

“That’s all?” she asks, biting the inside of her cheek. 

“Yes” he says, “Thank you.”

He reaches out and pulls her slowly towards him, pressing rough lips against her hairline.

A flush spreads over the bridge of her nose and across her cheeks, she ducks her head away from him to hide it. 

She hesitantly settles against the crook of his arm and places soft fingers onto the waxy skin centred at his sternum. There is a heavy press against her heart as she touches it, the scar that marks what he fought for.

“Does it hurt still?” she asks carefully.

“Not much” he replies. She flinches and begins to move her hand away, but his calloused fingers intertwine with hers and rests them back there. Her ocean eyes glance at him.

“It has a long way to go before it’s fully healed”, she hums.

He scrunches his face up at her.

“It’s fine”, he insists.

She huffs against his arm.

“Fine, but we are way overdue for another healing session after we get some sleep”

She spots his chest turn ruddy, his Adam’s apple bobs as he gulps.

“We?”, he tests quietly.

She shifts closer, rests her head where his neck meets his shoulder. His chest flushes warm, right under her cheek.

“Would you let me?”, she asks hesitantly.

“Yes”, he breathes. 

He trembles as her stomach settles against his hip, when she goes and relaxes against him. Something new pulses against his chest and up his throat as she tightens her small fingers around his, her pinkie tracing the lines of a new scar. It marks the weakness Azula knew he had when she first saw it. 

He thinks she has fallen asleep as he rests his cheekbone on top of her head, folding himself into her, his fingers carefully dance down her shoulders to soothe the periodic shakes that still travel down his arms. But they both lay awake, a heartbeat throbbing against the skin of their necks, a sourness settling deep into their guts as the fire roars outside. They wait in the dark for the hundred-year war to end.


	2. the beach

Her rough palm slides over the cool stone, the moonlight stripping her skin of its usual nut-brown colour. Her fingers slip into the little grooves that make up the imprint of a tiny hand, they trace the slight lines and indents of the palm carefully. Her bottom lip juts out from its place under her teeth as Katara studies it further. The stone is large enough to fit in her lap, it rests securely on the worn blue cloth she wears as a shirt at her knees and yet, the hand marks an insignificant indent in the expanse of stone. And not for the first time in the security of Ember Island, she wonders if the war has taken this life too. 

She jumps slightly as a shadow blocks out the light of the full moon, everything that once looked ethereal in its soft light now looks… It looks sad. She had found this place opened and abandoned and was enchanted by relics of the past. But now in the dark, she doesn’t see the pretty things, but the solemn expression in a painted lady’s eyes. 

“What are you doing?” a raspy voice snaps. 

Her head lifts slowly to see him. His spine is ramrod straight and the charcoal hair that didn’t quite cover his forehead before he joined them, now shags across his yellowed eyes. She still isn’t quite used to seeing him with hair, even after two months. But she is used to seeing the clench in his jaw, because that’s the one thing about Zuko that hasn’t changed.

“It was open,” she says apologetically “Sorry, I didn’t mean to pry”

“Oh,” his eyes widen slightly as his fingers claw into his elbow “It’s you”

“Yeah,” she says slowly, tracing over the stone in slow circles. She can feel the burn of his stare stamp into her forehead as she uncomfortably settles against the wood beam behind her and begins to stand, cradling the stone in her hands.

“I’m sorry, I should just go,” she says quietly, but his hands clamp over her shoulders. She can feel their warmth through the thick cotton of her sleep shirt and she doesn’t like that she notices.

“You”, he licks his lips as he looks at her intently “you don’t have to go”

She steps back and he immediately releases her as her back hits the wood beam.

“Okay,” she says as she looks up at him. She slips down the length of the beam again and crosses her legs, gingerly resetting the stone on her lap.  
He crosses his arms over his chest tightly.

“Sorry, it’s just this place-” he trails off, voice rough. He eyes an empty space on the wall and clutches his elbows until his knuckles turn white.

“It’s a lot, isn’t it?”, she looks down at the stone nestled between her legs with a heaviness. The blue in her eyes is weighed down, like the swirl of the sea before a storm.

“Yeah”, his voice cracks a little “It’s a lot”

“So, why’d you come here?”, she asks softly as she looks up at him.

His spine straightens, his neck snapping into line with his feet.

“Why did you?” he retorts, meeting her gaze. 

Her gaze flits to her knees and his feet stay rooted into the wood floor. Her back tenses, with the lie of just wanting some air hot on her tongue, but he is not the others. She tells him the truth.

“I don’t know,” she says hollowly with steel in her eyes, she doesn’t feel the movement of her lips, doesn’t see the way he almost falls into the empty space between them.

The clouded look in his gaze fades as he eyes the stone she clutches in her hands; the air is still around them.

“I’m trying,” his brows furrow “I’m trying to remember” 

“Remember what?” she asks.

“Things,” he says, “when they were okay, before- “ 

He trails off again as his throat constricts.

“Before everything,” she whispers rigidly, her fingers leaving the stone on her lap to touch the azure one that rests against her throat. 

He looks down at her gently and his feet seem as if they are made of lead in the weighted steps he takes. He folds his legs underneath himself shakily and places a careful distance between them.

“In less than a month,” his voice is too choked, throat too tight “they’ll all be gone” 

He folds his arms around himself again and his nostrils flare as he releases a shaky breath. He searches her face, for anything, anything but the uncertainty in her eyes. 

He turns his head away from her, his scar twists into a scowl. The scar softened by the light of the moon, not by the emerald hue of crystals.

“Forget it. I’m sorry” 

She takes his hand to stop him from standing. His arm twitches.

“It’s okay to miss them,” she says, “even if you can only miss the good parts” 

“I shouldn’t” he spits, his fingers press into his left cheek. 

“They hurt me,” he mutters “and I’ll still miss it”

There is an ache in her chest at the implication as she laces her fingers together with his. 

“What will you miss?” she asks quietly. But she already knows, because she understands the longing for when things were simple, as if it would fill the cracks that death left in her.

He reaches out, reaches out to place his hand over the small imprint in stone.

“This,” it’s barely a whisper, but it’s there and the rasp curls into her ears. 

Her throat is pulled tight like the fabric of a drum. Her brow furrows as she lets go of his hand and traces her fingers over his palm.

“This hand,” she murmurs, “was yours”

“Yes,” he mutters “it was” 

Her fingers leave his palm and places her hand carefully over his on the stone. In one way or another, she thinks; the war has taken this life, like it has taken hers. With the absence of a mother and the faded innocence by being raised by war instead.

She thumbs the leather at her throat and bites her lip.

“It’s funny how things change,” she admits. 

His eyes flit to her neck and she can feel them burn.

“That was your mother’s” he says, “wasn’t it?”

She smiles slightly, his eyes lock with hers. 

“Yeah. it was” 

“I’m sorry Katara, I- “ 

He is cut off by her soft voice.

“What happened then, doesn’t matter”

Her thumb traces over the etch of a wave that reminds her of home and his fingers dig into the dip in stone. But his eyes, they focus on her hand, the way it fits against his. 

“Then what does?” he asks. 

She rests her head against the beam behind her, curls settling against her forehead. Not for the first time in the security of Ember Island, she looks longingly at the moon.

“I’m not sure,” she says.

He crawls forward and his robes drag along the floor as he settles next to her. He flips his hand over in her lap and tightens his fingers around her palm as he watches the ocean dance in the night. 

“Zuko,” she mutters.

“Yeah?” he asks, turning to her. She breathes in the sea and blinks the tears away.

“I miss it too.” 

His lips part as he looks at her, really looks at her for the first time. 


End file.
